Kayda's 11th birthday

11 years with this amazing girl!  She is such a blessing.  She is crazy smart, compassionate, and always ready to help.  I couldn't imagine what life would be like without this girl.  She loves volleyball, swimming, hiking, math, reading, and science.  She hates social studies, doesn't like watching basketball in the slightest, loves animals and likes to boss people around.  Sometimes it's "leading" and other times she is straight up telling you the way it's going to be.  Pretty much everything in that list is evidence that she is my daughter.  

 She's in leadership at school, the teacher in charge and the counselor love her.  Of course, all her teachers love her so that's no surprise.  One of the things she does for leadership is to read to a class before school. So Monday - Thursday (Friday is her "day off") she goes into a kindergarten class and reads to them for the ten minutes before class officially starts.  All of the kids put their stuff away and immediately go to listen to her.  We went out to eat and one of the kiddos was there.  She looks at Kayda and says "Hey you're that girl that reads to us" and gave her a hug.  For a while they called her "underwear girl" because the first books she brought were some of the pictures books we think are so funny.  "Dinosaurs Love Underpants", "Pirates Love Underpants" "Aliens Love Dinopants" and "Monsters Love Underpants".  

Her class at school only has homework if they don't finish something at school, which means Kayda never has homework.  She is known by her class as the "smartest girl in class" but none of them say it in a bad way.  She doesn't rub it in and is always willing to help.  There is a boy in her grade, I don't think he's in her class, but she can't stand him.  She tells me it's because he's smart but is always bragging about it, "This class doesn't challenge me", "I'm so bored" and so on.  It drives her nuts.  

For her birthday we went to dinner with Grandma and Papa H, as always.  On a different weekend she was able to have Ella come spend the night.  I always offer for her to invite someone else, but Ella is pretty much her favorite.